Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms McDermott for attending the committee meeting and sharing her very personal story with us. I know everyone very much appreciates it, and not one of us thinks it was in any way easy for her to attend here and do this. We are very grateful for the perspective she has given us.

It is true to say, and Ms McDermott echoes this herself, that every pregnancy has its own uniqueness and that every woman who is pregnant is deserving of support. It is fairly obvious from the picture Ms McDermott paints that that support just is not there. The word "patchy" probably does a service to access to perinatal hospice services in this country. It is a very generous description because such services are practically non-existent. To be able to provide women with a full range of care, such services should be in place.

I would like to try to build a picture in my head. Ms McDermott provided for us stories of people who are members of her organisation. Grace and - I will probably mispronounce this - Maite were born in Galway and the Coombe, respectively, but the papers do not say where Anna Kate, John Paul, Laura, Lily or Luke were born. Were they born in Ireland, as in, the Twenty-six Counties?